Page 1 of Mountain Man

1

Birdie

I was going to die.

My teeth started chattering harder.

The snow wasn’t just under me now, it was settling on me. The voices of my hiking group, calling my name, had long since faded. Now all I could hear was the wind whistling through the trees, though, with the way it had picked up, it was more like a banshee scream.

The weather report said it would be fine over the weekend, clear and cold, but perfect for a winter hike into the mountains. The weatherman had been wrong. This wasn’t fine, this was a full-on blizzard.

And now I was going to die.

This was what I got for trying to make friends. For trying something new. I was used to being alone; I had been most of my life. Which was why working in the Eaglewood library, since I’d moved to the small Colorado town six months ago, worked for me. It wasn’t exactly a hub of social activity. Why I’d suddenly decided I needed to get out and meet new people was beyond me right then. And hiking of all things. What had I been thinking?

Tears stung my eyes. What was I going to do? I’d stopped feeling my hands and feet a while ago and I was pretty sure I was minutes away from hypothermia. Not feeling my extremities was the only good thing to come of this. At least my throbbing sprained ankle was only a memory.

Maybe I could walk on it? They always said to stay in one place if you got lost, but I’d been sitting there, waiting for what felt like forever, and no one had come for me. I needed to find shelter, somewhere less exposed.

Mind made up, I clung to the tree beside me and tried to drag myself to my feet. A scream tore from my throat when I tried to put weight on my ankle, and I fell back to the ground.

Okay, maybe I wasn’t as numb as I thought. Black shadows hovered at the edge of my vision. I was going to pass out.

What was that?

There was a speck in the distance, but it seemed to be coming closer? No, my eyes were playing tricks on me. The shadows started to close in as I watched the speck get bigger, until it wasn’t a speck anymore.

It was a…

Yeti.

I screamed, or at least I thought I did. I needed to run, but my body refused to obey me, or even move. The shadows grew darker, narrowing my vision to a pinprick. The yeti was a few feet from me now and I struggled to remain conscious. It reached for me…

Everything went dark.

* * *

My brain, my limbs, felt sluggish and I couldn’t open my eyes.

I was warm, though, so warm my cheeks felt hot. I tried to open my eyes again, but it was a serious struggle, so I stopped trying for the moment. I lay still, letting the neurons in my brain try to fire back to life. It took a while, but slowly the haze started to clear. With my eyes closed my other senses had kicked in. Something smelled amazing—earthy, musky, woodsy. I couldn’t work out exactly what it was. There was a soft crackling—an unmistakable comforting sound. A fire.

I’d been found. Someone had rescued me.

I burrowed deeper, deciding that opening my eyes was no longer a priority. I was safe. I was warm. I was alive.

I tried to move my foot, which throbbed dully, to assess the damage, but it was being held by something.

That’s when my brain snapped back to full consciousness.

There was something big and hot wrapped around me. My fingers flexed against what I realized was a chest, a hairy one. The something was male, and that male was…

Naked.

Huge arms were wrapped around me and my feet were trapped between what I could only assume were solid, hairy calves.

Oh God.

I was naked as well.